Ancient Word Research Articles

The Use of Sacrilege in the Speech of French Canada

AMONG THE CHARACTERISTICS of a people none is more revealing than the way it swears. Remember, for instance, that ancient French word for an English soldier, goddam, purportedly dating from the Hundred Years War; it seems that the Frenchman simply applied as a generic term the one English expression he heard most frequently on the battlefield. Swearing is essentially a psychological phenomenon that functions as a release mechanism for strong emotions. Every society has its particular code of generally accepted principles of speech and action, based on long corporate experience. The individual is normally constrained to remain within these limits of propriety set as the safeguards of the society. Under the stress of strong emotions, however, a person may occasionally exceed the limits. The verbal explosion that then takes place acts as a kind of safety valve to obviate the physical explosion that would otherwise occur in the form of assault and battery on a person or wanton destruction of an offensive object. If, however, the safety valve does not work efficiently enough, the verbal explosion becomes merely the musical accompaniment to the physical aria. In terms of grammar, an oath is an interjection, that is to say, a part of speech with no syntactical relationship to the rest of the sentence. We might call it an emotional additive used for its contribution of color and flavor to the sense of the sentence. Oaths seem, moreover, to have a peculiar grammatical mobility, assuming with ease the functions of various parts of speech. This is not surprising in English, where grammatical categories are notably fluid, but it is particularly interesting in French, where much more rigidity is normally to be expected. Thus, even though basically it is an interjection, we shall see that a single form may function in addition as adjective, noun, verb, and, indeed, even as an omnibus vocabulary item where le mot juste is lacking. A final generalization before coming to more immediate questions: curses are noted for their wide variety in intensity, for they cover a range all the way from the most violent expressions of sacrilege or obscenity to the mildest of exclamations. These innocuous expletives can sometimes hardly be classed as oaths, but the limits between the objectionable and the permissible (the psychological and linguistic border line of profanity) are often hard to establish. A fairly basic distinction between the French milieu and the English milieu in Canada should be noted at this point. French-Canadian society has been

Ancient Word and Living Word

Ancient Word and Living Word

Astronomers in turmoil

The great upheaval in science, which began with chemistry and physics a quarter of a century ago, has recently penetrated the field of astronomy and caused a state of turbulence, uncertainty, and chaotic expansion unknown in the history of mankind. On October 4, 1957, the first Russian sputnik was thrust into an orbit around the earth and the words “exploration of space” replaced the ancient word astronomy.

An Indo-European Word for 'Woman'

Hans Ehelolf has published' two parallel passages from a fragmentary Hittite text. The important fact to which Ehelolf called attention is that in col. 2, line 8 we have an Akkadian phrase: A-NA LtBE-EL ?-TIM SALBE-EL-DI I-TIM, which is repeated in Hittite words in line 18: pdr-na-a? ig-bi-i pdr-naa? ig-ba-a?-?a-ri. Both lines mean 'to the master of the house, to the mistress of the house'; it follows that ig-ba-al-4a-ri, a dative whose nom. sg. is citable as i?-ba-ad-?a-ra-ad, is a derivative of i?-ha-a-ad e-e?-ha-a-ad 'master'. I, at least, have no doubt that the latter word is cognate with Lat. erus, the IH source of the two being either 'esxos or 'eso but there seems to be no evidence that clearly points to the Hattic language. Geographical considerations would make it as easy to assume that the names in -gar belong to women of Luwian speech. That is, in fact, the interpretation adopted by E. Laroche in his Recherches sur les noms des dieux hittites.6 After listing in his first two chapters a number of Hattic and Hurrian deities worshipped by the Hittites, he gives first place in Chapter 3 (entitled Divinit6s hittites et louvites) to three feminine names in a suffix -gara-, which, he thinks, show a Hittite thematization of more ancient words in a suffix -tar, and which are derived from Hittite nouns. First he cites 'I&-ba-al-?a-ra-ad, reported by Ehelolf, L.c., from Bo. 936.2.18 and 214 b 7. This

The Imagery of Lucretius

In explaining to Memmius his purpose in writing De Rerum Natura Lucretius wrote:nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura repertadifficile inlustrare Latinis vxsersibus essemulta novis verbis praesertim cum sit agendumpropter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem.He thus showed that he realized the difficulty of his task in making the Latin tongue express what it had never expressed before. But in spite of the poverty of Latin and the apparently unpoetic nature of his subject, he has proclaimed his philosophy in language that shows him a poet. For the ancient word ‘poet’ has truth in its root (πoıητής); a poet is a maker who, by using words in new ways, makes a new world; he is also, as the Romans knew, a seer, not one who foretells the future, but one who tells forth truths that lie hidden behind appearances.

The Word Family of Spanish desmoronar, Portuguese esb(o)roar “crumble”

In dealing with the non-Latin stratum of the Hispanic lexicon, the Romance linguist is rarely prepared to reach definitive conclusions with respect to the etymology. His is primarily the duty of assembling the cognates, doublets, and derivatives, of determining the configuration of the word family, of establishing the range of meanings, of discovering, in figurative use, the underlying images. By linking widely disseminated reflexes and combining scattered relics of an ancient word into an organic whole, he implicitly rules out untenable etymological bases, narrows down the choice of plausible solutions, and passes on a carefully classified set of data to a fellow scholar who may have the competence to integrate the unknown word family into a lexical system familiar to him, be it Iberian, Celtic, Visigothic, or Arabic. The fruitfulness of this preliminary analysis and systematization may be illustrated with the case of Spanish desmoronar, Portuguese esb(o)roar “to crumble.”

Ancient Words with Living Cognates

Ancient Words with Living Cognates

WEEVIL VERSUS CURCULIO

Curculio is an ancient Roman word, not at all used to denote a plum insect. It is slightly difficult to pronounce, and it certainly fails to inform the popular mind as clearly as the suggestive oid Anglo-Saxon word, “weevil.”Weevil, in its original and right use, designates only insects of the snout-beetle kinds, like the plum weevil, bean and pea weevils, corn or granary weevil, rice, pine, nut, water, and other weevils. Perhaps the only erroneous use of weevil made in this country was with the little yellow maggot of the wheat fly.

On the Naming and Classification of Mental Diseases and Defects

If asked “What's in a name?” one might fairly answer our knowledge of the thing named. Certainly, the primary meaning of the word seems to imply as much. “There is a petrified philosophy in language,” Professor Max Müller remarks; “and if we examine the most ancient word for name, we find it is nâman in Sanscrit, nomen in Latin, namo in Gothic. This nâman stands for gnâman, which is preserved in the Latin co-gnomen. Nâman, therefore, or name, meant originally that by which we know a thing.” And since we know a thing by its qualities or attributes, it follows that all nouns or names “express originally one out of the many attributes of a thing, and that attribute, whether it be a quality or action, is necessarily a general idea. The fact that every word is originally a predicate, that names, though signs of individual conceptions, are all, without exception, derived from general ideas, is one of the most important discoveries in the science of language.” I have quoted these sentences because it is necessary that we should know exactly what we are about when giving names to morbid mental states, whether they be of disorder or defect. They are meant to express as accurately as may be, our knowledge of those states. Hence it follows that naming is no mere ingenious exercise of the intellect, but a procedure of the greatest practical importance. Our knowledge is not only thus generalised, but also rendered easily applicable to particular instances. A single word may in this way indicate attributes, qualities, or the series of events known as causes and effects. In naming mental disease and defects, this method has been long practised. Thus the ancient term melancholia indicates both the characteristic physiognomy and the then supposed cause of a form of insanity in which there is morbid pain of mind. But the term phrenalgia of Guislain, meaning morbid mind-pain simply as differentiated from neuralgia, or morbid body-pain, is obviously better because it indicates the leading fact, attribute, or quality of the thing to be named. Of course the scientific form of the term differentiates the morbid mind-pain of melancholia from normal or ordinary painful feelings. And while the term indicates correctly the chief condition of a group of mental affections, it implies no theory or false fact, as is implied in the term melancholia. For there are persons who are melancholic who have rather a ruddy than a swarthy complexion; and when swarthiness is associated with morbid mind-pain, it is not always or even generally of bilious origin, but is commonly a melasma, and to be distinguished from an icteric tint. “The spleen” is another of those etiological terms which imply both a painful mental state and its cause, and is equally vague as melancholia. All such etiological names whatever are clearly open to the objection that they can hardly fail to be more or less erroneous since but little is known of the essential causes of many mental diseases; as, for example, of melancholia. There are a few great divisions, however, to which the etiological principle is applicable. Thus mental defects may be classed according as they are primary—that is, due to congenital defects in organization and function; or secondary—that is, consecutive to certain other morbid states occurring in a previously healthy brain. To the class of primary defects belong idiocy, partial or total; to the secondary belong amnesia, or loss of memory, dementia, and moria or folly.

XI. A List of Ancient Words at present used in the mountainous District of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Communicated by Robert Willan, M.D. F.R.S. and S.A.

The following list of ancient Words, commonly used by the inhabitants of a northern district of England, is offered to the Society as an object not devoid of interest. In presenting it, I may hope other Members will be excited to form collections of terms employed among the peasantry in different counties. Such a plan, it must be evident, would greatly contribute to elucidate both History and Philology. Those who make a research in other parts of the island will probably find a rich harvest, when compared with my gleanings near the rugged hills of Westmoreland, and in the adjoining border of Yorkshire.

Philological View of Some Very Ancient Words in Several Languages

Philological View of Some Very Ancient Words in Several Languages